28 May 2014 5:33 PM

Ukraine - A Warning to the Furious

I feel a strong foreboding about Ukraine. Stories quite a long way inside most of today’s papers recount appalling carnage in and around Donetsk, where jet fighters and helicopters were used earlier in the week by the Kiev government to retake the airport from rebels, and where the mortuary is said to be full of tangled, maimed bodies.

There are unpleasant stories from the town of Gorlovka (which I have visited, and which is twinned with Barnsley) claiming that policemen have been murdered by rebels there.

It all sounds extremely dangerous and chaotic, and I feel great sympathy for the courageous journalists attempting to report what is going on, and being rewarded with inside pages.

This is the kind of conflict where one could easily become dead, or very badly wounded, simply by driving down the wrong road at the wrong time of day, or by not leaving a building quickly enough. I have been very lucky in such circumstances, but plenty are not.

But my concern for the reporters and photographers and cameramen is just a small part of it. Who is in charge? What are they trying to achieve?

Although he is not really legitimate, as his predecessor was never lawfully removed, we have at least to give a fair wind to Petro Poroshenko, the newly-elected president in Kiev.

But can he, only just elected, have had any personal say in the use of overwhelming force in Donetsk? If so, things look very bad. Russia is plainly angling for a compromise over Eastern Ukraine, a federal system which would allow the east of the country to retain strong economic and political links with Russia.

There are good material reasons for this. Much of Russia’s defence industry, pretty much its only successful industry apart from oil, still depends on quite advanced factories in this part of Ukraine. An EU-dominated Kiev, subject to the sort of economic and trade constraints that EU satellites must obey, could not long permit such an arrangement to last.

There are also (as discussed here to the point of exhaustion) strong political reasons why Russia will do all in its power to prevent the transfer of Ukraine from its current buffer-state neutrality to EU/NATO loyalty. And Moscow sees a federalisation of Ukraine, with a good deal of autonomy for the east, as a tolerable way of doing this. It would without doubt prefer the whole Ukraine in its sphere. But it recognizes that this is not a realistic objective at present or in the foreseeable future, so does not seek to pursue it. This is just grown-up diplomacy, not all that difficult.

So when Vladimir Putin said he would recognise the outcome of the Ukraine presidential election, it was a significant concession, made not out of the kindness of his heart but in the hope of receiving something worthwhile in return.

An airborne attack on Donetsk airport does not seem to me to be that something.

Now, perhaps people in the Kiev regime were trying to bounce Mr Poroshenko, or hem him in by creating impossible hostility and so preventing compromise, before he was fully in charge. Perhaps some of them still half-fear and half hope that Russian tanks will come storming across the border. I have noticed how supporters of the Kiev putsch have always believed very strongly in the likelihood of such an action, and have wondered if it was wishful thinking, since it would compel the USA and Western Europe to intervene unequivocally on Kiev’s side, in some way. And this is what many of them want(in my view, quite madly, as it would cause untold grief. But they don’t seem to grasp this).

I have until now always doubted that Mr Putin intended an invasion It would be an act of emotional folly, likely to lead in the end to his own downfall, and I do not get the impression that he does such things. As Sir Rodric Braithwaite has said elsewhere, he usually knows when to stop. He knows his history. He knows that Nicholas II’s mobilisation in 1914 led directly to the murder of the Imperial family in a cellar in Yekaterinburg, and to the disaster of Lenin.

If he had done it before now then I would have to confess to having completely misunderstood his nature and motives. The Crimean takeover was quite different, aided by the fact that large numbers of Russian troops were already legally there, the status of Crimea was legally dubious from the start, thanks to Kiev’s blocking of a referendum on Crimea’s position 20-odd years ago, and the action had popular support.

Now that Kiev is deploying such strong violence in Donetsk, I cannot be quite so sure. Violence of this kind and on this scale can make men take leave of their senses, as history also shows. In 1914 it was as if they had put something in the water, so quickly did politicians take leave of their senses.

I must just hope that people on both sides keep hold of their reason and their sense of proportion. And also that this is not Mr Poroshenko’s will, and that he has the real power to control those who are seeking to ramp this up.

Meanwhile, where are the condemnations of the Kiev government for ‘killing its own people’? There is no doubt that it is doing so, and using indiscriminate methods. It is all very well saying (truthfully) that it faces an armed insurgency and claiming( almost certainly correctly) that this insurgency is being aided and armed by outsiders.

Exactly the same was and is true in Syria, but that has not prevented the liberal interventionist chorus from condemning the Syrian government and classifying it as a ‘regime’.

I’ll say again what I have said several times before. The EU and the USA are the aggressors in this matter. It is they who have intervened openly and actively in the internal affairs of what they simultaneously claim is a sovereign state, overthrowing its legitimate government when it failed to what they wanted it to do. It is they who have sought to make a major and significant shift in the alignment of a key state in South-East Europe, in the knowledge that such a change is highly unwelcome to a major neighbouring power. The fact that they have used NGOs, civil society organisations and gullible idealistic youths ( as well as biddable media) as their weapons does not mean it is not aggression. This is how aggression is done in the post-modern world.

Russia has no doubt used methods just as cynical and dishonest, if not more so. But it has been reacting to an attempt to alert the status quo, an attempt which only an ignoramus could believe to be unimportant, or unlikely to meet opposition. The West has then become righteously angry that its own methods have been played back, and that the country the ‘West’ hoped to push out of Ukraine has pushed back.

This is unrealistic and morally absurd. If you start a fight, then you cannot condemn your opponent if he retaliates.

And if your actions lead (as this adventure has) to deaths on quite a large scale, it is you, the aggressor, who is responsible for them.

War is hell. Its face, which I have glimpsed, is so ugly it is almost impossible to look upon. It always has been foul and cruel and always will be. Sane, civilized people should do their utmost to avoid it. The best way to avoid it is to compromise, and recognise the limits of your power. Do the EU and NATO and the USA have any capacity to do this, or do they think that because all Europe has so far fallen before them, that they can sweep eastwards until they reach the shores of the Caspian?This is not a board game.This is real earth, inhabited by real people with lives they hope to lead.

I have yet to hear any of the leaders of the 'West' talking like grown-ups. They aren't even cynical. They are just adolescent. Meanwhile the warnings from retirement of Helmut Schmidt are worth listening to. Look them up. Some of you may remember him as a very distinguished Chancellor of West Germany, an old-fashioned Social Democrat, and another man who knows some history, quite a lot of it from direct personal experience. He’s old enough to know what war is, and how hard it is to end, once it has begun.

Have products in east Ukraine got a bar code on them?
We attack every country that has not got a bar code on their products, because as Woodrow Wilson said, the role of America is to wage war to open up new markets.

The front page of today's Metro runs with a story that Britain is already being asked for an Addition £500 Million to cover the costs of the crisis in Ukraine, So what is the total EU expenditure so far? and for what? Public opinion here in London is resoundingly that that the intervention in Ukraine has been an expensive disaster and once again our Tax revenues have been used to destabilise what was previously a united and peaceful country, with the result that there are by my count around 300 people dead now who would otherwise have been alive. Are we entitled to see a breakdown or precisely what out £500 million has been spent on and when and how Ukraine plans to repay us?

I was also surprised to see the Guardian publish and article by George Soros on why the EU should underwrite investments in Ukraine, this is the same George Soros who in 1992 attempted to start a run on the pound by short selling, forgive my scepticism in thinking that he would like to reap any profits whiles expecting the taxpayer to pay out should his investments not pay off.

Public opinion in Europe is fast turning against the EU and it is precisely this kind of push for ever greater enlargement that is doing the damage. Why should the EU be courting Ukraine? What will it bring us? These are the concerns of the voters and taxpayers and the politicians as always are ignoring the messages the voters are sending them.

"Timothy Snyder ... probably one of the best public intellectuals alive"

I'm not sure how you judge the quality of intellectualism, Mr Jaremko, but I agree that Mr Snyder's opinions are very public. They always make for interesting reading. He seems to me to hold that popular and very American point of view that the expressions 'Russia', 'Russian Federation' and 'USSR' are synonyms.

I was intrigued by his recent analysis of the importance of the Ukrainian situation to Europe's future, reproduced in 'New Republic' on 11 May 2014. The piece is called 'The Battle in Ukraine Means Everything', and for all I know makes perfect sense if you live in the Americas. Here are two quotes from it:

"A vote for ... Farage in Britain is now a vote for Putin, and a defeat for Europe is a victory for Eurasia."

"Of course, the return to the nation-state is a populist fantasy ..."

The article is readily accessible via the 'net and I commend it to British readers, not least as an illustration of how Europe is viewed by their 'Special Relationship' partners.

Finally!! An honest report from the mainstream press. This whole affair has been a total eye opener to me. Top EU, and US politicians descended on Ukraine like a shoal of piranhas having a feeding frenzy. They stood on the stage in Kiev, giving rousing speeches to rally and incite the crowd to riot, while warning Russia not to intervene. Then, a conversation leaked on You Tube between US Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland and US ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt, exposed Nuland choosing the 'new government' - and this while President Yanukovich was still in power. Masked thugs wearing swastikas and chanting the names of long dead Nazis rampaged through Maidan Square occupying and wrecking buildings; digging up the streets for missiles, shooting, beating and setting police on fire in a hail of Molotov cocktails; yet our leaders and their mainstream media mouthpieces hailed them as 'peaceful'. Yanukovich left town for one day and was immediately removed from office. This was unconstitutional, and thus Ukraine's constitution ceased to exist. To compound this, such a vote required a 75% majority from the 450 Rada MPs and yet only 328 votes of the required 338 were achieved. Our 'esteemed' leaders raced forth to declare the 'new government' legitimate, the process, ‘a triumph of democracy’ while Obama invited them to the Whitehouse for tea.

The US and EU are morally bankrupt. They accuse Putin of breaking international law and yet have broken it themselves many times. Perhaps this is what Obama means when he talks of American exceptionalism – International law applies to everyone else except him and his allies. The US and EU are backing a fascist regime in which ten prominent members are from the neo-Nazi Svobeda and Right Sector parties. The European parliament condemned Svobeda in 2012 as racist, anti-Semitic and xenophobic. The US et al condone and encourage The Kiev regime as they bomb cities and send tanks and heavy artillery to kill their own people. If Yanukovich had done this we would be at war with him by now. The scene in southeast Ukraine is horrific and amounts to ethnic cleansing. Hundreds of innocent civilians have been gunned down in the streets and bombed in their homes, schools and hospitals, while scores have been herded into buildings and burned alive.

A racist, anti-Russian hate campaign is being conducted by western politicians and our media. By labeling all of those in the southeast as ‘terrorists’ and ‘pro-Russian militants,’ we dehumanize them and thus condone their slaughter.

There should be a criminal investigation into the involvement of US and EU politicians such as Obama, Kerry, Merkel, Hague, Cameron and Catherine Ashdown (Urmas Paet, Maidan sniper leaked call) in plotting - and in the case of the US spending $5 billion on funding - the destabilization and overthrow of Ukraine's democratically elected leader and also for their complicity in backing the war crimes of Kiev’s regime.

If the people who now govern Ukraine had really wanted to save their country and its (rapidly dwindling and ageing) population, they should have tried to make at least an attempt at 'winning the hearts and the minds' of their rebellious nationals of the South East.

However, they haven't even pretended to do so. This supposedly democratic pro-Western rulers use only force to subjugate the rebels. No talks, no overtures, no conciliatory jestures - only intimidation and violence. This is hardly the way to build a peaceful and united democratic State.

One can't escape the impression that the Ukrainian rulers have set themselves the task to do as much harm to their country as possible. And to provoke Russia into a full-scale war. If that were to happen, Russia would suffer a lot. But Ukraine herself will be simply annihilated.

The question arises: why are they so bent on this suicidal policy? Who benefits from it? And have the Ukrainian rulers already sent their children (if any) to a safe place abroad?

Peter Hitchens and several of his acolytes continue to present the crisis in Ukraine as a conflict between east and west, between Russia, on the one hand and the EU and America on the other.

I would suggest that it is a battle between those who want an end to corruption and those clans of what might be called the "nouveau extremement riche" who have raped the country, stolen its assets and plundered its treasures in the same way that Boris Yeltsin and his cohorts did in Russia. They want these practices to continue and they come from both sides of the political and ethnic divide. Is there a politician of any standing in Ukraine (or Russia for that matter) who is not a billionaire? Where do people imagine this wealth came from?

The newly elected president is a "chocolate" billionaire. Of course he is: Smarties and Snicker bars are what made him his billions. On the other side of this fictitious divide, we have Yanukovych with his palaces and estates, whose son became the second richest man in the Ukraine during his father's presidency.

If the west is involved in all this, it is via the shell companies set up by the City of London and other financial institutions to secret the wealth out of Ukraine (in the same way they did with Russian wealth) making huge amounts for themselves on the back of the Ukrainian people of all ethnicities.

The recent revolutions in this part of the world have led from autocracy, not to democracy, but to plutocracy and the plutocrats have invented differences among themselves in an attempt to distract peoples' attention from the ravaging of their assets.

Years ago when PH wrote 'Russia is basically Nigeria with rockets' , I thought his analysis and understanding of the region was dead on (keep in mind this was the 90s).

But his most recent work, such as this piece, tarnishes the Hitchens brand. I can almost see it -- people on the 5th floor in Langley saying 'what the hell has gotten into him'.

Sometimes I get the impression that Peter spent too much time with a certain clique of Moscow intellectuals in the early 90s and now is repeating their biases over and over again, or building on them. The 'Brezhnev-Andropovite' clique is not representitive of the Moscow intelligentsia, never mind some of their polar opposites in St Petersburg.

For those of you who truly want to get a better perspective, I can list many (or all if you really want) of the best subject matter experts in this field. Now, some of you may be adverse to people with Slavic surnames so instead, I will provide just two non-Slavs : David Marples and Timothy Snyder (the former being a brit who transferred to my alma- mater, the University of Alberta, and the latter probably one of the best public intellectuals alive).

Anyone who has followed this unfolding tragedy in any detail will know precisely who is responsible for lighting the fuse to the Ukrainian powder-keg, and despite the demented ravings of John Kerry, the culprit is not Vladimir Putin.

We now have Ukrainians killing fellow Ukrainians in increasing numbers, and when the war is finally over (assuming it doesn't lead to WW3) unrest could continue in that wretched country for generations, making the troubles in Ireland seem like a tea party by comparison.

This could get very serious, very fast. Fortunately the news is full of top stories about Vince Cable so I don’t have to think about it.

With the 60th anniversary Bilderberg meeting starting on Thursday, no doubt the world’s gathering, political and corporate elite can come up with a solution. On our behalf. In secret. We can be reasonably sure that the EU retreating from disastrous European hegemony won’t be part of that solution.

Mr. Hitchens considers the roughly 9% of the electorate who voted for UKIP last week to represent a "huge" portion of the British people. Should he not also acknowledge the far superior number of Ukrainians - genuinely huge, and arguably a majority - who favour their country's rapprochement with the EU?

President Putin may know when to stop and he may understand that explicit interference in eastern Ukraine could be his undoing ... but he will also be aware that inaction in the face of continued violence by the Kiev government could also make his position untenable. There will be those who would have been inciting him to "let them tankies roll" for some time.

Those in the west should not deceive themselves about the supposedly antiquated and dilapidated state of the Russian military.

We can only hope that the separatists in eastern Ukraine call "time", stash their weapons and resolve to use other means to achieve their goals. Sadly, when your friends and comrades have been blown to Hell by helicopter gunships, one's capacity for calm, collected thinking tends to be seriously diminished.

I don't think there's any point hoping that the Kiev government "pull in its horns". It seems to me that they have well and truly "got the bit between their teeth" and, even though they appear to have no need of it, incitement from the righteous imbecility of the EU and the US promises that the outcome is going to be very, very nasty.

"he is not really legitimate, as his predecessor was not lawfully removed"

This is false for two reasons: one, Yanukovich in a speech on May 26 said he 'respects the choice Ukrainians made' (ambiguous, but still somewhat of a concession); and two, there is no lawful way to remove a president of Ukraine except through elections. The constitution does not lay out any mechanisms for impeachment. Yes, several 'bills of impeachment' were registered in the Rada but none passed. If there really was a way, Yuschenko would have been impeached in 2008 when his popularity took a turn for the worst.

Yes, Yanukovich did not serve out his full term but, neither did Ukraine's first president Leonid Kravchuk, who was deposed in 1994 (after only 3 years). To my knowledge, nobody ever called his successor, Leonid Kuchma, as 'illegitimate' though his election, unlike Poroshenko's, took two rounds and was much criticized.

--
In terms of Ukraine's military industrial complex, yes Russia sometimes needs it for components or vice versa. Yet a case can also be made that Russia sometimes wants to nullify the production of any similar merchandise. For example, Russia refused to provide tank engines to its Ukrainian counterparts because their product lines were competing for the same customers. (in the end, Ukraine's Kharkiv tank plant developed its own engines but this was an exception)

Here he goes again! PH is again desperately scraping the barrel in order to find more dirt to throw at Ukraine and put Russia in the best possible light. The problem with PH is that he accepts the Russian imperial ideology that asserts that Ukraine is a made-up country, and that Ukrainians are really Russians who don't know yet that they are Russians. IT IS NOT THAT UKRAINE IS A MADE-UP COUNTRY, BUT RATHER THAT RUSSIA HAS MADE-UP PRETENSIONS OVER UKRAINE - the result of wounded national pride and vanity.
As for Ukrainians "killing their own people," even PH admits that many of the separatist fighters are Russian agents. I would also like to add that the locals who are joining the separatist cause are mainly members of the criminal fraternity - the kind of people who see this as an opportunity to take whatever they want from other people at gunpoint.
In fact some Ukrainians see that particular region, the Donbas - the birthplace of the ex-convict president Yanukovich, as an economic and political dead weight on the rest of the country; no wonder Putin is now pulling back from the conflict there - he does not want to saddle Russsia with the same dead weight that is the Donbas.

This is one of the best articles I have ever read. This sums it up perfectly, and already- reiterating what PH has said from the start- has history on its side. PH is correct, and the mainstream media and politicians of the western world are wrong, utterly wrong.

One of the founding principles of the Eu is that it is "Resolved to create an ever closer union among the peoples of Europe...".
According to my geography lessons (which were, admittedly, many moons ago) Europe extends as far as the Ural Mountains. Perhaps it is time for the EU to better define its territorial ambitions.

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